Saturday, March 12, 2016

Resurrection and Life

The altar crucifixes, the statues, and other sacred images are all
covered in purple today. Until
relatively recently, this 5th Sunday of Lent was called “Passion
Sunday.” With just two weeks to go till Easter, today marks the beginning of
Lent’s final phase, as the Church focuses our attention more and more on the
final events of Jesus’ earthly life – and why those events matter for us today.

The
gospel we just heard [John 11:1-45] recounts
the last miracle of Jesus’ public life – miracles which John’s Gospel calls
“signs” because they function to reveal Jesus and invite us to respond to him
with faith. The raising of Lazarus is the last and greatest of these “signs.”
But it also led the authorities to seek Jesus’ death. So life and death are
mixed together, as the same event that suggests the new life Jesus makes
possible for us also results (on the part of his enemies) in a decision for
death. The apostle Thomas’s somewhat surprising exclamation, “Let us also go to die with him,” is
actually addressed to us, as the Church invites us to accompany Jesus in his
final journey.

In
Rome, the Lenten stational liturgy is celebrated today with special solemnity
at Saint Peter’s Basilica. Many of the Basilica’s relics are exposed for
veneration on the main altar above Peter’s tomb, and at Vespers there is a
procession and special veneration of an image of Christ believed by some to be
Veronica’s veil.

On
top of all that, today we celebrate the 3rd (and final) Scrutiny of
the elect, preparing for baptism just two weeks from now at Easter. According
to the rubrics, the Scrutinies should deepen the elect’s resolve to hold fast
to Christ and to love God above all. How’s that for a modest goal? It would, of
course, be absurdly ambitious if we relied entirely on ourselves. But it is
Christ who is at work in us, Christ who (as we just heard) will give life to our mortal bodies through his Spirit dwelling in us [Romans 8:11].

All of which brings us back to the amazing story of
Jesus and Lazarus. The friendship shared by Jesus and Lazarus extended also to
his sisters, Martha and Mary, who first sent him the news of their brother’s
serious sickness. Strangely, however, he initially seemed to ignore their
message, letting Lazarus die and be buried, thus setting the stage for his
greatest miracle, but before that for an important conversation with Martha,
which for so many centuries has been the standard gospel reading at Catholic
funerals.

As he did in his earlier conversations with the
Samaritan woman and the man born blind, Jesus uses the conversation to reveal
something important about himself. Jesus’ surprising answer to Martha, I am the resurrection and the life, was
intended to hint ahead to his own unique experience of resurrection – something
neither Martha nor anyone else would have understood at the time, since no one
was then expecting the Messiah (or, for that matter anyone else) to rise from
the dead, all by himself, ahead of everyone else.

We, however, can follow the story backwards, so to
speak. We start from the fundamental fact that Jesus has risen from the dead,
and then we understand his death - and his whole life - in the light of that.

Lazarus was brought back from the tomb to resume his
ordinary life (and then to die again eventually). Unlike Lazarus, however, Jesus would rise out
of his tomb in order to live forever. Bystanders had to take away the stone for Lazarus to be able to come out, and Lazarus
himself emerged bound hand and foot. In Jesus’ case, however, no one would
either have to help him to come out or have to untie him. The resurrected life of the Risen Christ is something
altogether new and different and means death’s decisive defeat.

Hence the threat that this subversive belief in the
resurrection posed – and still poses – to those who see only the familiar world
we now know.

John’s Gospel goes on to tell how, as a result of
this event, the political leadership decided to kill Jesus - and to eliminate
the evidence by killing Lazarus too. It’s like that scene in Oscar Wilde’s play
Salome, when Herod, hearing that
Jesus has been raising people from the dead, declares: “I forbid him to do
that. I allow no man to raise the dead.”

The raising of Lazarus looks ahead to the
resurrection of Jesus, which will finally fulfill God’s promise to Ezekiel,
which we heard earlier [Ezekiel 37:12-14]: I
will open your graves and have you rise from them. I will put my spirit in you
that you may live. I have promised, and I will do it, says the Lord.

Martha’s invitation to Mary, The teacher is here and is asking for you, is addressed to all of
us, who are in turn invited to address it to one another - and to this world
which so desperately needs to hear it, but which sometimes seems so lacking in
hope.

After experiencing what Jesus had done for Lazarus,
many believed in him, but others went to report him to his enemies. Jesus’ own
resurrection, to which the experience of Lazarus looks forward, likewise challenges
each of us to respond - one way or the other.

Homily at the 3rd Scrutiny of the Elect and the Presentation of the Lord's Prayer, Immaculate Conception Church, Knoxville, TN, the 5th Sunday of Lent, March 13, 2016.

About Me

Rev. Ronald Franco, CSP, is a member of the Missionary Society of Saint Paul the Apostle (The Paulist Fathers) and Vice-Postulator for the Canonization Cause of Paulist Founder, Isaac Hecker. He is Pastor of Immaculate Conception Parish, Knoxville, TN,